Archive for ‘August, 2015’

Get ready for Rio Nudo, the swingingest, sleaziest travel video that could only be made in South America! Rio Nudo is a lo-fi look at the wild sights and sounds of Rio De Janeiro’s red-light district, filled with sex clubs, prostitutes, orgies, and barrels of garish exotic dancers with fruit ’n’ shit in their hair.

Hidden cameras sample the pleasures and perversions of Rio de Janeiro, the "sin capital of South America". Scenes show a nude woman, beautiful despite the ape-like hair that covers her body; a visit to Rio's "red light district" and the infamous clip joints of the waterfront; erotic dancing and a voodoo "dance of death"; Rio's uninhibited youth in an orgy; and finally, a 3-day carnival during which the entire city erupts in a frenzy of drinking, dancing, and sensual abandon.

When a robbery goes tragically wrong, three desperate criminals kidnap a woman, an innocent man, and a sick child he is rushing to the hospital. The rest of the film plays out ingeniously inside a speeding car where the victims and the gangsters face off during a roller coaster ride that surely inspired Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse entry. The entire story plays out in real time, showcasing some harsh sequences that have earned it comparisons to Last House on the Left. Kidnapped, also known as Rabid Dogs, is a not-often-seen film from Italian director Mario Bava (Planet of the Vampires). Although it has been released previously on DVD, it's now getting the Anchor Bay treatment. It's a mean-spirited, spry gangster film and the only Mario Bava story that seems wholly rooted in the real world.

Philippe and Esther are happily married and living a middle class life with their young daughter. Esther submits completely to Philippe, and becomes whatever he desires. In order to add excitement and sophistication to the marriage, Philippe suggests they begin sleeping with other people then describing it to each other. But Philippe becomes filled with jealously and anger towards his wife until tragedy destroys the entire family.

A young woman (Kali Hansa) washes up on a beach and is discovered by Bob (Robert Woods) and his wife Moira (Tania Busselier). In her delirium, she tells them of how she snuck onto the island of the Count and Countess Zaroff (Howard Vernon and Alice Arno) in search of her missing twin sister only to be raped and tortured by the couple. Bob and Moira are hardly surprised, since they regularly procure women for the Zaroffs and have similar plans for Spanish tourist Silvia (Lina Romay), but not before everyone gets to indulge in the "pleasures of the flesh" in all its forms.

Irene's life is a dreary mix of driving highways along the French-Belgian border, calling home to her husband and children, and performing nightly shows. She is being oddly comic, toying with surrealism and wearing a bizarre mask for each performance.
One day, whilst driving to her next venue, her car breaks down. A passing motor-cyclistist named Dries comes to her rescue; he fixes her car and, in return, she gives him a ticket to her next show. Irene takes a liking to the taciturn Belgian, whilst he becomes fascinated by her and her troubadour lifestyle. Could this be just a passing interest or the beginning of something more substantial...?

A gaunt, weary priest named Father Joseph Suryn arrives at a quaint village inn to rest for the evening, eating his scant portion of bread alongside a bawdy, drunken patron named Wolodkowicz who is quick to ridicule his asceticism. The voluptuous barmaid, Adwosia, goaded by Wolodkowicz into foretelling the priest's future, provides two cryptic predictions for Father Suryn: that he will meet a maiden who is a mother, and that his beloved will be humpbacked. The portentous words begin to take on relevance when Father Suryn is revealed to be the fifth priest to be dispatched by the church to a remote convent on the outskirts of town. A cloistered order of Ursuline nuns are reported to be possessed by demons, purportedly under the influence of an executed, morally flawed secular priest named Father Grandier.
Nevertheless, despite Father Grandier's death, the bewitching of the nuns continues to resurface, manifesting through incomprehensible, often violent fits of convulsion, blasphemy, and hysteria. Father Suryn has been assigned to exorcise Mother Joan - the most tormented of the nuns - from the purported eight devils that have taken possession of her physical body in the belief that her salvation will expurgate the entire convent. However, as Father Suryn obsessively struggles to understand the root of Mother Joan's spiritual affliction, he becomes increasingly tormented with own conflicting emotions towards her seemingly irredeemable soul...

The artistic world of Paris in the 1920s comes to life as if in a lustrous dream in The Moderns, a romantic’s lush vision of a group of expatriate Americans at a time and place of some of the century’s most tumultuous creative activity.
There is Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) who, at 33, is viewed suspiciously for not having made it yet as an artist. Oiseau (Wallace Shawn), a gossip columnist for the Tribune, who dreams only of going to Hollywood; Bertram Stone (John Lone), an elegant, rich, philistine art dealer with a disturbing violent streak; his wife, Rachel (Linda Fiorentino), with whom Nick has a past and, he hopes, a future; and Hemingway himself (Kevin J. O’Connor), who amusingly careens through the action in varying states of inebriation, trying out titles for a new book.
Also critical to the assorted personal equations are Libby (Genevieve Bujold), an impoverished gallery owner with values diametrically opposed to those of Stone, and Nathalie (Geraldine Chaplin), a patroness of the arts who convinces Nick to execute some spectacular forgeries.

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando, The Godfather) is an ordinary dockworker just trying to keep his head down and get paid. Like all of his fellow dockworkers, he takes orders from mob boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb, 12 Angry Men), the stern ruler of the waterfront. Terry used to be a fighter, but his career dissolved after his brother Charley (Rod Steiger, In the Heat of the Night)—one of Friendly's close associates—asked him to take a dive. Terry may be a bit unhappy with the way his life has gone, but he wouldn't dream of actually rebelling or protesting. As far as he and nearly everyone else are concerned, only a rat would fight the system.

Alas, when Friendly's cruel leadership causes bodies to start piling up, the denizens of the waterfront grow increasingly restless. The infuriated Father Barry (Karl Malden, Pollyanna) begins urging local citizens to step forward and say something, but most are terrified of what the consequences might be. However, when things turn particularly bleak, Terry begins to reconsider his loyalties. Is there any hope of ending Friendly's tyrannical reign?

Tuesday Weld stars in this stylish adaptation of Joan Didion's caustic novel about a disillusioned and self-destructive actress whose career and marriage are falling apart.

Maria Wyeth has been admitted to a mental institution to recuperate and try to get her life back on track, but she finds the analysis and questions she has to endure there are no help whatsoever, preferring to wander the gardens of the hospital's grounds. As she meanders through the greenery, she remembers what has brought her to this stage, and those relationships that have never really worked out...

In World War II, Noelle Page (Marie-France Pisier), a young and attractive French woman, falls in love with Larry Douglas (John Beck), an American pilot stationed in France. The couple has a torrid love affair that ends abruptly when Larry receives orders to return to the United States. Larry promises Noelle that he will come back for her and marry her. He never does come back and Noelle becomes very bitter. Vowing revenge, Noelle is determined to become rich and famous by using men for their money and power. She becomes a famous actress and marries Greek multi-millionaire Constantin Demeris (Raf Vallone) whom she does not love. In the meantime, Larry is married to Catherine Alexander Douglas (Susan Sarandon), a beautiful and very trusting young woman from Chicago.
One day Noelle and Larry’s paths cross again...